Meet My Tele Choir

A quartet of T-style guitars: Each is configured
with different pickups and wiring
schemes to provide a broad sonic palette
for stage and studio use.

Ah, the good old Telecaster. Yes, it’s
hard to play—at least in comparison
to some guitars—but I view it as one of the
most flexible recording and gigging guitars
around. Let me share my experience with
four Teles I’ve collected to get my work
done, and then maybe you’ll agree.

I grew up as a pure Les Paul guy. I
thought a Paul’s tone, beef, bottom end,
sustain, and sheer power was unbeatable.
But I did have trouble keeping them in
tune at gigs, they were freakin’ heavy, and
they couldn’t get as funky as I needed. I still
have them, use them, and love them—but I
needed more. (Don’t we all?) My switch to
a Tele was instigated by the need for a different
sound, yet it also reflected an evolution
of my playing style.

At the time that I made the switch,
the bands I was gigging with were mostly
groove-oriented R&B outfits, so the choice
was almost a no-brainer. But my collection
of Teles really grew as I began to do more
TV composing. Sure, I could use the Les
Paul in the studio with no problem, but I
needed the sound of country, blues, rock,
reggae, and even metal. Could a Tele handle
all of those? Yes, but to make this happen I
needed to outfit them with different pickups
for maximum versatility.

All four of my T-style guitars were built
by Rob DiStefano at Fret Tech (frettech.com), who I introduced you to a few
columns back [“Emergency Truss-Rod
Tweaks,” July 2012]. Built of paulownia
wood, these Ts are all super lightweight,
and when you play them unplugged, they
resonate almost like acoustic guitars. But
I think of them simply as vehicles for my
pickups—each of which delivers a distinctive
tone for different jobs.

The main workhorse (which I also
play live) is a cherry burst that I string up
with .010–.052 string sets. I hate noisy
pickups, so it’s got Bill Lawrence L-200
Noisefree Singles. Noiseless pickups—
okay, pickups with very low noise—are
especially crucial when tracking in front
of a computer or when recording solos
through a cranked amp, and this guitar
records as quietly as any 6-string I’ve ever
owned. The L-200s are wired to a 4-way
switch. This guitar covers clean country
in position 1 (neck pickup), funky clean
in position 2 (bridge and neck in series),
max rock distortion in position 3 (bridge
and neck in parallel), and solos
that cut through the band in position
4 (bridge). I love this guitar!

My second T-style guitar is a hybrid with
a Lace Sensor PS900 soapbar in the neck,
and a Bill Lawrence L-290TL in the bridge.
It’s my whammy guitar—it’s got a Trem
King vibrato (soon to be replaced with a
Bigsby B50)—because sometimes you need
just a touch of trem in country tunes to get
that desolate desert sound. The main thing
this guitar gives me is that dark, edgy P-90
tone, and it simply sings when plugged into
my vintage Gibson amps. I also string this
one with .010–.052 sets.

The third T was built to be a light, highgain
replacement for my Les Paul, both
onstage and for studio work. It’s outfitted
with a set of 4-conductor Rio Grande
Barbeque Bucker pickups. DiStefano wired
the guitar like my ’burst T, with four
pickup positions, but when I pull up on the
tone knob, both pickups run in single-coil
mode for even more tonal variations. This
guitar is strung with .011–.050 sets, and it
puts out a very hot signal, which in turn
drives amps quite hard (though I also use a
pedal for extra gain). It sounds best through
my Mesa/Boogie Mark IV head and is even
brighter than my Les Paul—with almost
as much beef. The distortion tone is quite
nice, but it also gets a cool funky sound
with an almost Gretsch-like quality, so
it can cover country when need be. I’ve
noticed that humbuckers typically don’t
have as much sonic personality as singlecoils.
To me, humbuckers have an edgy
sound that reflects less of the guitar body’s
character and instead is more defined by
the amp they’re running through. But this
guitar rocks hard and covers all my heavy,
nasty humbucking sounds when recording
away from home.

The last T-style guitar has Esquire-style
wiring and a single pickup handwound by
DiStefano. Featuring alnico 5 magnets and
overwound with 11,500 turns, the pickup
delivers a full, thick tone that makes amps
sing. To keep the noise floor down, it also
features a dummy coil that sits under the
pickguard. It has no magnets and simply
generates a signal that’s the inverse of the
main pickup, which helps kill some of the
hum but with minimal treble loss.

This guitar has a 3-position selector
switch, where position 1 is just pure
pickup—with no tone pot in the signal
path—while position 2 engages the tone
knob, and position 3 features a .0047 μF
cap that slices off some treble. The latter
sound is similar to what some players call
the “cocked wah” sound—it’s as if you have
your wah pedal engaged and set to a fixed
position. It’s also strung with.011–.050 sets,
and I keep it in open D tuning for nasty
blues, open chord work, and slide.

My point for this column is that, for
the most part, one guitar can’t cover all
your sonic needs. But for the way I play,
a Telecaster-style guitar provides a flexible
platform that I can load with different
pickups to get a huge variety of sounds.
Sure, I have a closet full of guitars—and
every single one of them gets used—but
these four are my main workhorses. So if
you need a variety of tones in your music,
go forth and buy more guitars ... or at least
more pickups!

Rich Tozzoli is a
Grammy-nominated
mixer/producer/composer who has worked with artists ranging from Al Di Meola and Ace Frehley to David Bowie and Hall & Oates. A life-long guitarist, he’s also the author of Pro Tools Surround Sound Mixing and his music can be heard on such shows as Fox NFL, Pawn Stars, American Guns, and more.